Sakura of DOOM

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And since Rachel asked, my five worst books ever!

In no particular order:

RL Stine - I can't remember which book this is, since there are so many with increasingly implausible and silly deaths. But the book had a character dying via a piece of dough placed in his/her mouth. The dough rose and miraculously acquired enough force to suffocate the person or to cause death via dough in the brain. I swear, I am not making this up.

Barbara Hambly, the Dragonsbane sequels - I think I may have blocked out how truly terrible these were from my mind. This is particularly sad, because I love Dragonsbane, but the sequels reverse a key decision in the original book (I think) and then begin to incorporate incoherent dimension- and/or time-travel. Other elements that I may or may not be remembering correctly: squalid details about homeless, addicted people in an alternate dystopic earth and how John either saves them or becomes one of them. Mely notes that there is also demonic mother-son incest, which I managed to scrub out of my memory.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin - So, there's the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending, and then there's Slammerkin, in which rocks (metaphorically) fall, everyone dies; you sell your virginity for a red ribbon, get gang raped, then thrown out of the house; you abort your misbegotten gang rape child with a stick; and your best prostitute friend freezes to death on the street and you briefly think of burying her and instead pry a bottle of gin from her cold, dead fingers. The best thing? This is just the first hundred pages! It gets worse (spoilers)!

Robin Schone, Awaken, My Love - I cannot believe I actually finished this. Here's the original post. First, there is the gratuitous detailing of historical squalor. If two people are going to have sex later, I really do not want to know about how unclean they are when they pee, nor do I want details about bad breath, bad teeth, greasy hair, and dirty clothing. I do not mind these things, but when paired with descriptions of bulging tumescences and yonis and chakras and other nonsense blindly taken from the Kama Sutra, they are ridiculously funny. Also, the heroine's husband has apparently never heard of sex, masturbation, or orgasms, and he is supposedly a perfectly normal guy.

The hero's wife is frigid, so he rapes her into submission! We get entirely too detailed descriptions on dryness and tearing, zero remorse from the hero, and no sympathy from the author. Clearly, the hero's wife deserved it for being frigid, for having one leg be shorter than the other, and for being raped by her uncle when she was a child.

I still cannot believe I finished this. All I have to say is that it was before I started throwing books at walls.

And now, I can't think of a fifth, as they were either so bad that I never finished them, or mind-numbingly mediocre. Instead, I list: Piers Anthony, especially the Adept series and its gratuitous virtual sex (IIRC); Robert Jordan, with his notions of how women act; Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series; Anne Bishop's penis-shaped breadsticks; and the Beatrice Small book I started and never finished because it was just that bad in every possible aspect.

I finally got a copy of this via Bookmooch. I read it first nearly four years ago; now, a reread only makes it richer and more enjoyable.

The conceit of the book is supposedly "old tales in new skins," but unlike many fairy tale retellings, Donoghue delivers. I suspect she does this by using themes and images in fairy tales and making them into symbol and metaphor; Donoghue gives them all a delightful twist that is both surprising and makes you think, "Yes, yes of course."

The stories themselves aren't overtly fantasy, though they still take place in lands with kings and queens and princesses. I particularly love Donoghue's language:

Ever since my mother died the feather bed felt hard as a stone floor. Every word that came out of my mouth limped away like a toad. Whatever I put on my back now turned to sackcloth and chafed my skin. I heard a knocking in my skull, and kept running to the door, but there was never anyone there. The days passed like dust brushed from my fingers. (from "The Tale of the Shoe")

And I love what Donoghue does with the stories. Cinderella's fairy godmother is Thumbelina; Snow White's stepmother was once the maid of the Goose Girl. The tales move back in time: old witches become young princesses. Donoghue's take on the stories is nicely subversive. I do wish there were more about race in there, but on the other hand, I already love what she does with gender and age and sexual orientation.

Highly recommended.

I preface this entry to say that this is most definitely not the best book to take with you on vacation to relax.

Unless, of course, you enjoy reading dark, grim, extremely depressing stories while on vacation.

Mary Saunders is in jail at 16 in the prologue; we spend the rest of the book finding out how she gets there and what happens after. She's the daughter of a seamstress in the 1700s, and eventually, she gives up her virginity in exchange for a red ribbon. Then we get into the rise and fall of Mary Saunders, if you can consider going into prostitution a rise.

Donoghue is very good about historical detail, like she was in Life Mask, and I have no doubt that her account of Mary's life is an accurate portrayal of the options open to women at the time, to the lives of those who didn't have money, and etc.

But... Mary is simply so miserable, and she makes so many choices that put me off. Many of the choices arise because there just aren't that many options open to a woman at the time, but others are poor personal choices. And it didn't help that I disliked Mary more and more as she grew older. Also, since she is a prostitute for some time, all the men in the story are merely walking penises. Decency is perpetually stripped away by lust (no pun intended). And... well, I am sure it is a very accurate mindset for a 16-year-old prostitute in the 18th century, but it was very miserable vacation reading.

The end is so grim and so depressing that I turned right to Naruto to try to get some of it out of my brain, but I ended up having bleak, grey dreams for several days after that. I would fault the author for unnecessary depressing-ness, except that the end is historical fact, and Donoghue wrote the book after discovering said fact and wondering how things might have gotten there.

So really, it is just grey and bleak and grim and made me feel like all people were horrible, and those who weren't horrible were fools.

Yay! Got flowers from the boy, along with my hangers, a USB hub and a cable, so now I can use my new printer. And then (my mail day continues) Golden Fool from thewildmole arrived!!! Very exciting.

I devoured Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch yesterday night, and I loved it. It's a collection of retold fairy tales, with most of the fantasy taken out. Each tale is very short and leads to the next tale through one protagonist questioning another. It's also extremely female -- all the protagonists are female, and most of the secondary characters that matter are as well. Princes are very much pushed to the side. The prose is very straightforward, yet peppered with metaphors that make which fairy tale one is reading apparent from the first page. Part of the joy for me was seeing how Donoghue took the fairy and the fantasy out of each tale and yet had them remain completely true to character. Sometimes there's a twist at the end of them, sometimes not, but she manages to make the archetypes into very real women, removed from the "once upon a time."

I also started Thomas the Rhymer (trying to get library books out of the way before starting GF), and I definitely like it much better than I did before. I also first read it sometime in ninth or tenth grade, and wasn't too good with the slowness back then.

So in the past two days I've gotten two flowers/plant things from the mail. I find it very funny how we can actually ship these kinds of things. And it's just a very strange experience opening a cardboard box and finding something alive in there!

Speaking of plants, I've been thinking of getting potted roses for my balcony... anyone know if this is a viable idea? My window faces the inside of the apartment complex and is shaded over by trees. It's sort of west-ish, doesn't get much direct sunlight.

Baking applesauce bars now...